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Is C2 possible without a tutor ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 121 of 144 21 December 2014 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
This also depends on whether it's a one-level or two-level exam. Not to mention that working with a decent tutor in person is also expensive. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 122 of 144 21 December 2014 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Let me make this plain to you: that is a very specific subset of people with a very specific set of requirements. You are not the only tutor on this forum. There are many here that have tutored other people to pass exams. They include yours truly. I have had many students that are immigrants and have pressure on them to pass certain tests. But this is only a subset of my student ensemble and I have met a fairly wide range of them. And for them, doing work in the TL doesn't have to be a goal. Do they use tutoring? Yes, but they do it because they have a specific goal to pass. Some people simply don't have this. You are generalizing an experience across too wide a range of potential targets. If you are talking about your students, that makes sense because it's why they are interested in your service. But that's just not big enough a part of the language-learning population and a sizable part of the working population doesn't use their TL at work.
In that case, there's a planning error going on...
I want to make two reservations here: 1) speaking well means public speaking or holding a talk, doing a job interview and so on - this is speaking in a formal context with certain rules. That requires practice. In colloquial situations it doesn't really matter. You fail to distinguish between important contexts - a pretty serious failure for a professional tutor. 2) You can't learn to write well a week for the exam, but that doesn't mean you need external guidance. If that person does it themselves and starts four months beforehand and does the appropriate planning themselves, then they do not need external guidance at all. This argument is a clear non-sequitur.
For a professional tutor, your reading comprehension also leaves something to be desired. Friends can be excellent correctors: in the right context. I would rather a friend than a professional academic tutor correct me on slang matters, because a friend is more likely to use slang correctly. They know how colloquialisms work, whereas a professional tutor is usually hired for a specific register which is completely different - although I've also used tutors which went into slang, but those were all tutors I was also on a friendly basis with and who also recognised my needs as a person. So no, you're again failing to distinguish context. In the sense of a formal exam, professional corrections and feedback are better, I agree, but again, this is not the be-all and end-all of language learning. S_allard, you really need to understand certain nuances in texts here. It's becoming visible that you are taking way too much of these texts at face value and you're not recognising subtle but detailed nuances that strongly influence the poster's position. Many of us here have tutoring experience and we're not all dummies who need to be taught a lesson. Edited by tarvos on 21 December 2014 at 10:57pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 123 of 144 21 December 2014 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Great post, tarvos!
I don't think a tutor can teach you to write well in a week either. At the very least, you're extremely likely to either run out of time at the exam or rush it and forget many little things you learned. or... s_allard, do you really mean helping an average student who's already taken the prep class and needs some personalized instruction/little secrets in order to fit a fairly specific format? Maybe that's doable, but I think for most HTLAL'ers that's not the definition of teaching/learning to write well. Edited by Serpent on 21 December 2014 at 11:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 124 of 144 22 December 2014 at 12:11am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Depends on the exam and the level but in general, no, I don't think so either. I actually think the bigger risk is simply either not having the required level for the test (someone who makes this rash a decision simply doesn't know what he's getting into) or misinterpreting the questions/style at the exam. Often exams test for something hyper-specific. It's important to have that down pat beforehand and know the details exactly. 90% of exams are really standardized so you know what to expect and what to train. That's one reason I never liked exams because it's like teaching a dog tricks. Real art's found in the wild where it's grown free and is subjected to much stronger, natural variation. Edited by tarvos on 22 December 2014 at 12:17am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 125 of 144 22 December 2014 at 12:12am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Wow, what did I do? Oh, oh, I seem to have put my foot in it again. I try to be nice and polite. I give
credit where credit is due. I'll admit to my mistakes and misunderstandings. And what do I get? A lump of coal for Christmas. I'm told that my reading comprehension leaves something to be desired but the funny thing is that I never said I'm a tutor. I don't do tutoring because I already have a full-time job that pays me very well. But I do use the services of tutors for myself and I recommend them to others. I have no professional axe to grind. What I find fascinating is to find out that some of the people who argue so strenuously against using the services of language tutors are tutors themselves or use the services of a tutor. So I'll let the ad hominem doggerel go by and concentrate on the subject at hand. I highly recommend the services of a professional tutor, who may or may not be a friend, by the way, when preparing for a language test and as a general aid to improving one's skill in a foreign language. On the other hand, it is certainly true that many people are able to do well without the services of a tutor. They have no need for a diagnosis of possible weaknesses or areas in need of improvement. They do not see the need for a strategic plan to address specific issues. They are able to correct their own speech and writing in a satisfactory manner. They can answer by themselves any doubts or questions about usage they may have. For example, when they listen to recordings if there are any things they don't understand, they can always work them out on their own. Or if there are questions of regional usage, that is not a problem. They do not see the value of stylistic suggestions or alternative formulations. They do not see the utility of reading authors or articles recommended by a person well versed in the literature and linguistics of the language. They do not enjoy reading a complex document in the company of someone who can point out details of grammar and style. Or even mistakes that are to be found in printed works. In summary, tutors need not apply. It's a simple as that. There is no need to get all worked up. Edited by s_allard on 22 December 2014 at 12:14am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 126 of 144 22 December 2014 at 12:14am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm not going to put in an ad hominem directly, but I'll try and do it through thinly veiled sarcasm then? Bah, disappointing, and sincerely incapable of trying to read the actual argumentation in my post which wasn't nearly as direct as you thought it was. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 127 of 144 22 December 2014 at 4:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
A tutor can also be a friend, but a friend doesn't have to be a tutor. As I said, I prefer to have all those cool discussions without involving awkward power dynamics. And for the popular languages there are already millions of such conversations online. I personally think that a good learner shouldn't rely on a tutor for their "strategic plan" btw. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 128 of 144 22 December 2014 at 4:30am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
After the sideshow we can get back to some serious stuff. The simplistic explanation, if one can call it that, of how Learner 1 can have a perfect score for speaking yet fail the listening exam is that Learner 1 speaks better than they can understand. But speaking, in the context of a CEFR exam, certainly means interacting with and understanding the examiner. The examiner obviously did not perceive any difficulty being understood by the candidate. There is also the more general question: Can one speak a language better than one can understand it? Everybody here knows that all learners of a language will say that they can understand better than they can speak. I've never met anyone who says that they can speak French better than they can understand it. They might say something like, "I learned Parisian French in school and I don't understand Québécois French" but that's not the same as "I can say everything I want to say in French but I don't understand when people talk to me." To come back to the case at hand, I think there is more than meets the eye. We see that learner 2 scrapes by with a speaking grade of 68 and gets a listening grade of 71. This seems pretty logical. But for the same listening exam why such a huge gap for Learner 1 between 100 for speaking and less than 60 for listening? Did Learner 1 not understand the examiner when speaking? What was there about the listening test that Learner 1 found so difficult? For example, did the listening test use a more formal register that Learner 1 was not used to? This is hard to believe for someone who had passed so much time in a German university. I persist in believing that it was a bunch of silly mistakes due to overconfidence. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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